


Balance

by r_lee



Category: Baccano!
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 23:28:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r_lee/pseuds/r_lee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They balanced each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Balance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FiKate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiKate/gifts).



> Written for the off-season fanfic exchange [I Need My Fics](http://ineedmyfics.livejournal.com) at LiveJournal.

Ennis drove, but Firo walked. He’d grown up on the streets of Manhattan and figured the only scrapes he ought to get into were the ones he could get himself out of. Without help, from people or from automobiles. Trains. Any or all of the above. As a kid he learned the city’s back alleys, the rooftops, the safest way to get from fire escape to fire escape. Which stoops were safe and which ones were likely to get him shooed away, which neighborhoods were good to hang out in and which ones got people maimed or killed on a regular basis. People always said Claire was the natural at escape, but he was pretty darn good at it himself.

Now, of course, it didn’t matter; he could do anything and go anywhere and die a hundred times and he’d come back. That was handy, and while he’d never minded danger in the first place, being immortal put a new spin on things. It was one he liked and figured he’d keep and besides, it wasn’t like he could get rid of it.

*

Firo was immortal, but Ennis was eternal. There was a difference, and the difference came down to the undeniable reality that one of them was born and the other was manufactured. She still didn’t know the process in its entirety, but Firo did. He learned it when he absorbed Szilard’s knowledge. In so many ways she knew she was still learning and was doomed to be an eternal student. Being alive in the first place was something of a miracle, and there were days she could almost feel herself resenting Szilard for having created her the way he did: as a toy, deprived of emotion and free will. She understood why he’d chosen to do things that way. It was self-protection, and as long as he held the key to her life and death, she was bound to obey. Bound to a life of servitude. Ennis remembered when Szilard taught her to drive. It was a painstaking process, one she blundered time and time again. The problem, she had decided through trial and error, was that Szilard had neglected to imbue her with self-confidence. That was something she didn’t know much about. All she knew was process and how to begin to excel through repetition, repetition, repetition.

She had little to no fear. The only time she’d been regretful was when she knew she was about to die with so much left to tell people. But even then, she wasn’t afraid, just... wistful. And then Firo put his hand on her forehead and said _tell them yourself_ and for the first time in her short but eventful life, she had good reason to smile.

*

Ennis was serious, but Firo smiled and laughed. Hey, there wasn’t a whole lot _not_ to be happy about. Even as a kid, when he’d screwed around and stolen apples and started running errands for people a lot more powerful than he was, he did it with levity. Some even said he had a natural grace, although he wasn’t ever convinced of that until Maiza took him hat shopping. It was that apple-green hat that did it, put another smile on his face, put a bounce in his step. He’d always liked Maiza like a kid likes a father, or at least like he assumed it was the way a kid likes a father. Growing up without one made it hard for him to tell, but he had no shortage of brother-figures and respected elders to look up to. Maiza was different, though. For one thing he’d looked the same for as long as Firo could remember, and when he was little he didn’t even think about it but when he was initiated into the Family and saw Maiza’s knife wound heal, he started thinking about it. How come you never get older, Maiza? It was the question on his tongue, the one he never bothered to ask. Everyone, he figured, had their secrets.

Once he found out, it made him laugh in an oh, so _that’s_ why you always look the same, guess we’re partners in it now, hey, buddy? kind of way. It tickled him, honest, when he realized what was going on. He’d always been the kind of person who was in love with life and living, for better or for worse, and now he had all of it to look forward to. Who wouldn’t get a heck of a kick out of that opportunity?

*

Firo was opportunistic, but Ennis was studied. Where he would go off and do things at the literal drop of a hat — it was how they’d met, after all — she was not, by nature, carefree and exuberant. That was because for her, everything was a lesson. When she was created, her first lesson was _obey your father_ and her second was _learn to dress yourself._ She knew early on that the only one she could depend on to take care of her was herself. Szilard would only do it for as long as it suited him or for as long as he needed or trusted her, and she was never under any delusion that he had created her out of love. No, he created her out of necessity and because he could, and those were the only reasons. He needed someone to do his work for him and someone to physically represent the brilliance of his mind. She also came into the world knowing, because Szilard imbued her with the knowledge, that he would only allow her to live as long as he saw fit. That the moment she began to think too much on her own — the moment she started becoming independent or that there was the tiniest clash of wills — would be her last.

She lived very much under his thumb. The closest she came to a description of the way she felt, although she never would have admitted feelings to Szilard, was in a book she read about zombies. Those poor souls suffered through life in dead unfeeling ways, and had no joy and no levity of spirit and no desire for either of those things. Her deepest secret, the one she kept from everyone including Szilard, was that she’d always had a kernel of the idea of love buried deep in her heart. It was just that under pain of death, it wasn’t allowed out to play.

*

Ennis was reserved, but Firo was exuberant. He loved all things, so many things. A puppy on the street would make him smile. A kind word would make him absolutely beam. A sappy movie would force him to swallow back tears. An amusement park ride would fill him with childlike thrill and wonder. Fizzy soda pop made him giggle uncontrollably. The minute he placed the palm of his hand on Ennis’s forehead he knew she didn’t have the luxury of any of those types of feelings. He knew immediately what Szilard had given her and what Quates had refused to bestow on his own daughter, and in that one moment of contact he made a very important decision. Whatever she needed and however long it took, he would stay by her side. He would be the love and affection she’d never had before. He would surround her with love and laughter and fun and games and all those good things, things she could study, things she could learn. He would surround her with people, too, people filled with a love of life and a brightness of spirit. Why not? Szilard’s memories taught him that Ennis had the innate ability to grow into whatever and whoever she wanted. That given time, once she had come to the realization she didn’t have to live under the restricted mantle of the wacko who’d created her, she’d be free to live with gusto.

He had forever to help her get there, and even as he thought it, he knew she didn’t need his help. Her discovery process would be a long one, no doubt, because she was cautious and thoughtful by nature. But watching her get there? Boy oh boy, would that be a thing of beauty. She could teach him patience, and he could teach her to smile.

They had to be a match made in heaven.


End file.
